Thrilled to be joining up for the Tis The Season Blog Hop with an awesome group of secondary teachers!

How I Bring Meaning to the Season for My Students

Each year my school does a HUGE holiday food drive for our local Christmas Hamper Society.... and our students get so involved - it's truly amazing. From organizing boxes for collections, jars for money, keep track of all of the donations and then getting it sorted and boxed up for delivery - the students do it all! They truly learn that the best gift of all, is giving to others and their selfless acts touch 100s of families in our town. The sense of accomplishment and the pride the students take in knowing they have made a family's Christmas special is amazing.

How I Bring the Meaning to the Season for My Family

My hubby and I try to think of a way to give back every year and it seems that Christmas time is the perfect time to do it. This year we are taking some fruit / vegetables to a local animal shelter as they have 26 orphan bear cubs to feed - an unusually high number - and they're desperate for help! We're also going to take my niece and nephew Christmas shopping for a toy to donate to the Christmas Hamper.... we'll let them pick out something for a child in our community and then take them with us when we drop it off. It's something we all look forward to every year and it's important to us to show the younger generation the importance of giving to those less fortunate.

One Thing I'm Looking Forward to This Season

Getting out in the snow for some fun! Last year we had very little snow on our local Vancouver mountains and we weren't able to enjoy snow shoeing or snowboarding like we usually do! But we're off to a chilly snowy start and we are hopeful we can get up onto the slopes for some snowy fun! Here's a picture of hubby and our dog snow shoeing at a local provincial park in 2014.

A Holiday Gift For You

Enjoy this fun and easy to use freebie! Perfect for January when we all have to go back to school. It's a great time to set goals and resolutions for the year and it's an easy way to warm up students after some time off. Just click the image below to grab a copy!

Be sure to hop on over to the other awesome blogs listed below for some more holiday cheer!

Peer editing can be a powerful tool in an English classroom but it can also be a colossal failure. As a result of too many failures I have changed the way I do it over the last few years and I have seen a huge improvement in my students’ editing and writing skills. And... I think my students enjoy it too! #addedbonus

I used to ask students to switch papers with a partner and go through an editing check list with each other and then they’d hand their papers back to each other and get to work correcting their errors. However, I found that their editing was very, very basic so I needed a way to switch it up.

Now, I have them switch papers with 10-12 people before going to work on their revising and editing. This is 10-12 more people giving feedback and help… and it means that each student gets to see more examples of other student’s writing.

But… instead of getting students to look at the entire piece of writing, I ask them to focus on one particular aspect at a time. It’s less overwhelming for my weaker students and it really allows students to see all the different aspects that make up a good piece of writing.

My technique involves a lot of paper passing, so you need to set up a system so that works with your classroom set up. At each pass of the students’ papers I ask students to look for and do different things.And what I ask them to look for, will be dependent on the type of writing they’re editing.With each pass the students must read the entire piece of writing… you may need to allow a few minutes depending on the length of the work.

Here are some suggested prompts with EACH pass of the paper.

Put a check mark at the top of the paper if there’s an engaging title. Put an X if there’s no title.

Circle any words you think may be spelled incorrectly.(I sometimes do this one twice!)

Put a star beside the topic sentence.If there is no topic sentence make a note at the bottom of their page.

Put a check mark beside the climax of the writing.Make a note at the bottom if the climax was not obvious or was confusing.

Put a small check mark beside three words that you think were particularly helpful in expressing an idea.

Circle any missing punctuation.Period, quotations, commas….

Circle any words that should be capitalized.

Put a question mark beside an idea or sentence you were confused about.Add some details about why it was confusing at the bottom.

What’s one thing you’d like to know more about in this writing?Ask a question at the bottom of their paper.

Put a number 1 beside the first sentence that support the topic sentence.Put a 2 beside the second…

Write a sentence at the bottom of the paper giving the writer an idea to improve their work.

Underline the concluding sentence.Cross out anything that says “These are all the reasons why...” or “In conclusion…”

Put a check mark beside the concluding sentence if it links back and relates to the topic sentence.

Circle a boring verb and write a suggestion for a new vivid one.

Underline the transition words.Make a note at the bottom if there are none.

Write a note at the bottom of their page to let them know if they varied their sentences or if they are all the same.

I am sure you will think of more ideas as you get started and work through this process. The type of writing will also dictate that types of things you ask your students to look for. I try to make sure that when I ask students to circle something it’s an error that needs attention… this way when they get their paper back they know what needs to be done. Check marks mean “well done”, underlining is also identifying positive structures in their work.

My students look forward to doing this—they get to read so many examples, they’re only asked to focus on one thing at a time and when their paper are returned they see so many great suggestions.

I hope you get a chance to try out this strategy with your students as I have truly found success with it in my classroom. Good luck!